When trading partners transact business, specific information is exchanged in a particular sequence. One example of such a sequence is when an order is placed, receipt of the order is acknowledged, fulfillment information is provided, the order is filled and delivered, bills are sent, payments are made. Of course, many other scenarios exist to describe various transactions. These transactions traditionally included human participation in every single one of these activities and paper confirmations of many. Many of these activities, then, required re-entry of certain information at each stage resulting in relatively long transaction times and plenty of possibility for human error at several steps in the process.
In recent years, structured transmission of data between business organizations by electronic means has replaced some of the more manual transactions described above and has become commonplace in certain industries. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) includes the transmittal of electronic data from one trading partner to another and may include information pertaining to purchase orders, advance ship notices, invoice, ship notice/manifest, functional acknowledgement, product activity data, application advice, carrier bill of lading, UPC electronic catalog, transportation carrier shipment status to name but a few. In short, almost all of the activities traditionally reliant on human intervention and its associated disadvantages can be facilitated by computer-to-computer communication of data.
In general, EDI includes the transfer of data computer-to-computer and requires strictly formatted messages that represent documents. Most often the processing of received messages is by computer. The messages are formatted according to a standardized format of electronic documents which are independent of communication and software technologies.
In the usual EDI standard arrangement, each trading partner in a pair has access to its own EDI translator and the transactions occur with the help of a value added network. The value added network receives a transmission, determines its destination, and sends it on. Some value added networks also offer a service whereby it receives from the sender a message (in strict EDI format) and re-maps certain data as requested by the recipient within a strict EDI formatted document and then sends the re-mapped message on to the recipient. This arrangement typically requires that each trading partner pays for the EDI translator and the value added network service which can be quite costly.
One of the many standard documents exchanged in an EDI transaction is a “functional acknowledgement” receipt. In a classic example of its use, a trading partner sends an order through its own EDI translator and a value added network to a different EDI translator owned by another trading partner. The EDI translator owned by the receiving trading partner translates the order for the receiving trading partner. The receiving trading partner then sends a “functional acknowledgement” message back along the same path that indicates the order was received and usually serves no other function. The recipient may first perform certain validation tasks prior to sending the “functional acknowledgement” message, but that is not always the case. This routine allows the sender to be able to ascertain whether the order was received. Of course, the expectation here is that the computers belonging to the respective trading partners perform these tasks with little or no human intervention.
Clearly, a small trading partner can be at a disadvantage in the EDI standards world. Often, larger trading entities have developed their own message guidelines within the standards of EDI and may be unwilling to modify them. This leaves smaller companies with the onerous task of creating new message guidelines of their own in order to work with the larger trading entity. Further, a smaller company working with several larger trading entities may have to create a separate set of message guidelines for each of the larger entities it works with. And, the smaller entity would be faced with the costs of mapping data points to meet both the EDI standards and the individual demands of the more powerful trading partner, perhaps incurring costs of an EDI translator and use of a value added network.
One method of improving transactions between trading partners is to facilitate information sharing with upstream and downstream trading partners to minimize obstacles caused by use of disparate electronic documents and formatting issues. Facilitation of information sharing can result in optimization of demand forecasting, and more accurate production and inventory planning, as well as better predictors for and management of sales, marketing, and distribution. Current methods of information sharing, including Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as mentioned above and middleware, are generally expensive and difficult to implement. Common obstacles include the number of business partners (often several hundred), the complexities of business process integration, the multiple legacy operating systems, applications, and databases involved, and the proprietary technologies used.
Recently, the service industry has begun offering web-enabled system alternatives for assisting and facilitating these transactions between trading partners. These services include the service provider as an agent or middle-man for receiving and translating documents between trading partners. The more advanced of these services accepts information in a format specific to a first trading partner and, through mapping, converts it to another format which is specified by a second trading partner. In doing so, the requirement for both partners to comply with EDI standards is removed along with the need for use of EDI translators and value added networks and it is possible for one or both partners to simply use their customary electronic documents. The data points on a partner's customary document are mapped to the specifications of the service provider. However, because the service provider in this scenario is the information translator and conduit, certain requirements of the traditional transaction (and expectations of the trading partners) such as functional acknowledgments pose new problems. Specifically, although the service provider can (and some do) provide a functional acknowledgement message to the sender indicating that the service provider received the original message, that is not the same as receiving a confirmation from the intended recipient of the original message. Some trading partners do not consider this sort of functional acknowledgement to be the equivalent of one provided by the recipient.
What is needed is a cost-effective, non-invasive software solution designed to streamline and improve supply chain operations for manufacturers, distributors, buying groups, and retailers of goods and services. A system that enables real-time, effective information sharing among trading partners throughout the supply chain without requiring each trading partner to own an EDI translator or to convert its own documents to EDI standards would resolve several current problems. A solution that will eliminate the traditional cost, time, and infrastructure barriers caused by the diversity of legacy systems employed by disparate trading partners while still providing the necessary checks and balances related to the transactions is needed.
It is one objective of the present invention to provide a less costly alternative to each trading partner than employing its own EDI translator.
It is another objective of the present invention to reduce the costs of exchanging documents electronically by removing the costs of a value-added network.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide a system whereby the sender of an order or other message will receive a functional acknowledgement from the recipient rather than from the agent or service provider.
It is a final objective of the present invention to provide an alternative process that is easily accessible, highly efficient, and complete with regard to all of the communications necessary for completing a transaction.